The effect of mixed planning on the fluency and complexity of EFL learners' writing performance

This study set out to explore the effect of planning conditions on Iranian EFL learners' written task performance regarding fluency and complexity. Forty five intermediate learners were selected out of a population of 90 TEFL learners on the basis of their scores on the proficiency test. Participants of this study were randomly assigned to three groups: pre task planning (PTP), on-line planning (OLP), and simultaneous pre and on-line planning (POLP) groups. A Decision-making task was used for data collection. The results revealed that pre task planning resulted in greater fluency. unpressured on-line (OLP) planning had statistically significant effect neither on syntactic complexity nor on written fluency, and the opportunity to engage the learners simultaneously in per-task and no-line planning (POLP) enhanced the fluency and complexity of their written performance significantly.